Chapter Five
There was a look of pure shock on his face that almost satisfied Jessica. Like she’d won some kind of point in some battle between them.
She probably shouldn’t think of it that way since he was allegedly keeping her safe, but he’d seemed so stoic, so sure. It had irritated her.
And now, she’d pierced some of that mask. Though he quickly shored up his reserves. Back to stoic. Back to that…space between them.
“I’m not sure—”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, focusing on anger because if she didn’t, she felt panic. Fear. “Not here. Not now. You almost called me Kirsten this morning, after I…” She shouldn’t tell him that.
He studied her. “After you what?”
She hesitated.
The bottom line was she was trusting him—or at least him through her trust of Zach—and if she was going to demand answers, then maybe she had to be forthcoming enough for him to understand…
She knew something wasn’t right. Whatever was going on, she needed to know the details because she felt how wrong things were.
“I had to sign for a delivery. I didn’t think.
I didn’t… It was like muscle memory. I signed a name—not my name.
Kirsten. Didn’t even think about it. Didn’t even…
It was just there, like I did it all the time when I’ve always signed my name Jessica.
And I wouldn’t have thought too much of it, I would have pushed it away, but then you almost said that name.
You said Kir before stopping yourself. It’s not a coincidence. ”
“It could be,” he replied.
“But it’s not.” He’d be acting differently.
She would feel differently. And while her doctor had said not to push things, to center herself in the present, she’d also told her to feel her feelings.
Connect to her thoughts. To wade through what felt real and what didn’t. And deal with both. Not push. Accept.
Something about that had Jessica remembering that dream she’d had of him. Blood gushing from his shoulder. It had felt so real. So, so real. Like a memory.
She looked at his shoulder now. She had convinced herself it was a dream. She had pushed away the terror, the way her heart had ached, because they were bad feelings. Bad…everything.
But what if she felt? What if she let herself remember it? She could still see it clearly. In the memory he had a beard, pain-hazed eyes, and blood gushing from his shoulder. She couldn’t place herself in that memory, so she wanted to believe it was a dream, but now…
Faith and Zach and everyone trusted Ellis to keep her safe. To be alone with her here. It meant something. They were connected somehow. In her past.
Because that dream had happened, and it had felt real.
Because the envelope had said Mrs. Sutton. Sutton. His last name.
Because she looked at him now and felt an array of emotions she couldn’t parse, but they were always there when he was around.
And only him. Like he was the only complicated and confusing figure in this life she actually remembered.
So what about the one she didn’t?
She lifted her gaze from his shoulder to those hazel eyes. “Take off your shirt.”
His eyebrows winged up, and she couldn’t fight the blush that crept into her cheeks. That was not what she meant. “Show me your shoulder.”
He didn’t move, but she didn’t see any bafflement in his expression. He was being too careful. “What about my shoulder?”
But he was hedging. He was hedging and it meant…
“I want to see your right shoulder.”
He opened his mouth. Shut it. Then shook his head. Refusal.
Unacceptable. “If you expect me to stay here, to trust you, to listen to you, show me that I’m not going crazy.”
His expression softened, in that way she recognized. That softening where she always expected him to reach out, to touch her.
But he never did.
The implications of all that could mean felt like a brick on her chest. She could barely catch a breath.
“You’re not crazy,” he said with all that gentleness in his voice, if not in any kind of touch. No, he was keeping himself very much out of reach.
“Then take off your damn shirt, Ellis.”
“Jess—”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t call me anything. Unbutton your shirt and show me your right shoulder. Or I’ll do it myself.” She took a step toward him. She didn’t know why that felt like a threat, why he clearly took it as one, but he did.
He lifted his hand to the top button. He hesitated, but when she took another step toward him, he carefully undid the top four buttons, exposing a swath of skin. A hint of golden chest hair. An impressive ridge of muscle.
She wasn’t looking at his shoulder. She should be.
She really should be, but…wow. She knew he was in good shape.
It was impossible to miss him running in the mornings in the summer.
Impossible to not notice how…fit he was no matter what kind of clothes he was wearing.
But she’d never seen this much skin and maybe she’d had a reaction before.
She’d just always been able to look away.
Not now. Not when they were alone here. Stuck here. In the middle of nowhere, just each other and—
Thankfully, any inappropriate reaction was suddenly and rudely doused in ice because when he pulled the fabric off his shoulder, she saw what she’d hoped she wouldn’t.
Exactly where she’d dreamed him bleeding was a web of scars. Like he’d been shot there. Like he’d bled there. Like her dream was real and she’d witnessed it.
She felt like she was hyperventilating. Spots. There were spots in her vision and a pain in her chest.
“Breathe,” Ellis was telling her firmly. “Just breathe.”
Okay, maybe she was hyperventilating.
Because if she knew he had a scar there, if she could picture him bleeding there, nothing she thought was true could be. He was no stranger. No…whatever.
He’d been part of this past that was mostly a blank. She looked up at him. The pain in his hazel eyes was so naked, so haunting, but it only mirrored her own.
“Who am I?”
ELLIS HAD BEEN shot before, so he knew the searing, tearing pain of it. This was exactly like that, except there was nothing to do about this pain. No way to staunch the bleeding, pressure away everything leaking out of him.
There was only the pain. And the terror he was messing everything up, all in his quest to keep her safe.
Her eyes were full of tears. Her breathing too quick, too shallow. He’d become an expert in not touching her when he wanted to over the past two years, but he couldn’t stop himself now. He brushed a hand over her hair, kept his gaze on her wide eyes.
“You’re safe,” he told her.
She jerked away from him. “That is not what I asked.” A few tears fell over, but her voice was direct and strong and angry.
Better than terrified.
“I’m not Jessica Smith. I know I’m not. I’ve always known…
” She trailed off, clearly questioning everything she knew or didn’t.
It just about killed him. “I knew I didn’t remember.
I knew things were a blank. I always thought I’d remember someday, if I should.
But…” She looked at him again, a safe distance away, holding herself when he’d rather be the one holding her.
“I’m… I’m Kirsten somebody and you know me,” she said, her voice not wavering but the tears in her eyes making everything horrible.
He thought of every time he’d wished she’d say my name is Kirsten since coming to Hope Town. But this wasn’t remembering. It was just putting unfortunate dots together. “Your doctor—”
“Screw my doctor!” she shouted, flinging her hands up in the air, effectively shutting him up. She met his gaze, tears making her brown eyes look darker. “My name is Kirsten,” she said, one of those tears falling over and tracking down her cheek.
He had to fight to speak against the tightness in his throat. Dr. Leigh had said to let her come to her own conclusions, and this wasn’t memory, but it was her own conclusion. “Yes.”
“What’s my last name?”
He couldn’t tell her. It went against what he’d been told. It went against everything he’d fought to do for the past two years. Keep her safe. Keep her…okay. Keep her at a distance. Even if she didn’t remember, she couldn’t know. It would be…
He didn’t have the words for what it would be. He didn’t know how it would feel. Awful, still awful.
But Kirsten had always been good at puzzles, mysteries, understanding people and the way they might say something that meant something else. She just had a…way about her.
Even without her memory, it was clearly still there.
“I’m not… I’m not Mrs. Sutton.” She slapped at the tears on her cheeks. She straightened her shoulders. “I’m not,” she insisted, like it was a challenge. Like she could make it so.
“Okay,” he agreed, because that was what Dr. Leigh told them to do. If she was upset, go along. They didn’t need to go out of their way not to upset her, but confronting her past should happen with a trained professional.
Not him. Not alone in a cabin after a threat on her life.
But if she was standing in front of him saying she wasn’t Mrs. Sutton, then…well, she was afraid she was.
“I need you to explain this to me. From the beginning. I need to understand what is happening.” She was trying to be brave, but her voice wasn’t strong and another few tears trickled down her cheeks.
“We don’t need to explain,” he said softly. “It’s late. Let’s sleep. Let’s—”
“Tell me. Say it. Now. I don’t care what the doctor said. I don’t care about anything. How can you expect me to stay here, to sleep with all these questions? With all this? Just tell me the damn truth.”
“Jessica.”
“No. Now. You will tell me now or I walk out that door. Who the hell am I?”
He would stop her. He didn’t want to have to, but he would. She wouldn’t walk out that door, no matter what his answer was, but because he couldn’t let her walk, and because he loved her more than anything in this life, he had to tell her the truth.
“Your name is Kirsten Elizabeth Sutton, and you are my wife.”